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A Passion for Broadcasting

Those of us who
have covered
broadcast technology
for any length
of time can usually spot
the innovators and pioneers
who have helped
shape the course of this
industry since its early
days. If
there could be one word that
would describe a common
element among all of them,
it’s “passion.”

That is what drives Jay
Adrick, this year’s recipient
of the NAB Television Engineering
Achievement Award,
which he will receive during
the NAB Show Technology
Luncheon, April 10.

Jay’s career has paralleled
the evolution of broadcasting over the past
five decades and he had a front row seat
to many of our industry’s biggest achievements,
including the transition to DTV. And
although the bulk of his career has been
in television technology, like so many of
us, Jay started out in radio, an industry for
which he still holds great affinity.

A native of Cincinnati, Jay got his start
with Crosley Broadcasting, tagging along
with one of the engineers working on the
Voice of America relay station in Bethany,
just north of the city. “I saw this great hall
with six 200 kW transmitters that were connected
to literally a square mile of antennas
that were beaming to the world,” Jay said.
“And as I watched the engineers operate the
transmitters and change frequencies, I just
had this inner feeling that I
wanted to be a part of this.”

Jay continued working
on radio broadcast projects
through his teen years and
during his studies at Xavier
University in his hometown,
where he obtained
his undergraduate and master’s
in communications. He
got his start in television after
submitting a plan to reconfigure
a TV production
facility that had been donated to the university
into a teaching facility for broadcast
and was offered a job by the university that
“was too good to turn down,” he said.

Jay has spent all of his nearly 49 years
of his career in Cincinnati, almost half of
that timespan with Harris Broadcast, from
which he just recently retired as vice president
of broadcast technology. He continues
to consult for Harris on a part-time basis
and is still actively involved in broadcast
technology organizations, including the
ATSC. When asked what accomplishments
he’s most particularly proud of, he cites his
involvement in developing the ATSC-M/H
standard over the past seven years, as well
as his work with the DTV transition and
his efforts in getting Xavier University’s
WVXU-FM—one of the top-rated stations
in Cincinnati—on the air in the late ’60s.

When Jay talks about his passion for
broadcast, he cites the period of time and
the personalities that helped shape the
industry and their enthusiasm, as well as
their ability to take risks with its evolution.
“I grew up in an era of television pioneering,”
Jay said. “The people I looked up to
when I got into the business in the ’60s
were the pioneers and they weren’t afraid
to jump in and try things.”

Jay joins an impressive roster of past
award recipients including Ira Goldstone,
Mark Richer, Charlie Rhodes and Oded
Bendov, and he’s not done helping to guide
the industry into the next phase of its evolution.